9 Band Names That Mean Less Than You Think

5 Seconds of Summer, Nine Inch Nails and WTF is a Hoobastank?

Oct. 29, 2015

Photo: PRPhotos

By HowardStern.com Editorial

When you need a name for your band, sometimes all it takes is throwing some random words together. From flipping through the dictionary to using inside jokes to just settling on something that "sounds professional," many bands have a story about coming up with their unique names, they just aren't as well thought out as you might think.

Here are 9 bands with names that seem like they must have some mysterious or profound meaning behind them, but really don't...

5 Seconds of Summer

Photo: Facebook

"I sent them a message and said 'Hey guys, I'm naming the
band 5 Seconds of Summer,'" guitarist Michael Clifford told a Connecticut radio station in 2014. "[They] were like 'Okay. We're cool with that.'"

"It doesn't have any sort of story," bass guitarist Calum Hood
added, explaining that they attempted to name the band while sitting around
at school one day. The group never expected the name to last very long but then One
Direction called, added them to their Take Me Home Tour, and millions of fans
started screaming, "5 Seconds of Summer, I love you!"

There's no turning back after that ... or is there?

Photo: Twitter

Nine Inch Nails

Photo: PRN / PRPhotos.com

"It really doesn't have any literal meaning," Trent Reznor
explained in an interview. "It's a curse trying to come up with band names."

He liked how the abbreviation NIN looked though and after
testing it out for two weeks, decided he'd finally found the perfect name.

Rush

Photo: Getty Images

Original drummer John Rutsey was known to have pushed the
other guys of Rush to practice and perfect their unique sound. When it came
time to play one of the band's early gigs, they realized they still hadn't come
up with a name for themselves.

Biographer Bill Banasiewicz writes that it was
Rutsey's brother who had a genius idea while the group was sitting around
frantically trying to come up with a band name.

Why not just call themselves Rush?

Flaming Lips

Photo: Facebook

"We really didn't know what we were gonna be called," Coyne explained
to Spin Magazine in 2010. He had read about a group going by the Flaming Hands
and liked the sound of that so he altered it slightly to the Flaming Lips and
assembled a flyer for the band's next show that featured a woman with her legs
spread open with a mouth covering her important parts.

"Some folks have told me that I got the name from an old
Fred Astaire musical that it supposedly shows up in," Coyne said. "Others said
we took it from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nope, it happened like I said
it did."

Indigo Girls

Photo: PRPhotos

Amy Ray and Emily Sailers had performed under a couple of
other names before they landed on the word "indigo." Literally.

In 1985, Amy was thumbing through the dictionary, trying to
find a cool name to put in front of the word "girls." While reading through the
I section, she came across a word that would fit the bill and the Indigo Girls
were born.

Bay City Rollers

Photo: Sony Music Entertainment

How does a Scottish rock band make it in America? Pick a
U.S. city to name your group after. The Bay City Rollers looked at a map of the
U.S. and settled on Bay City, Mich. The "rollers" part of their name is
supposedly in reference to the rolling waves of Lake Michigan (which none of them had ever seen in person). Their plan for
American domination worked, sort of – the band's biggest hit, "Saturday Night,"
went to #1 in 1976.

Asia

Photo: PRPhotos

A supergroup as big as Asia deserves a big name! That was
manager Brian Lane's thought process when the progressive rock group formed in
the early '80s. In the heat of the moment, they decided that nothing was bigger
than the biggest continent in the world and the rest is history.

Hoobastank

Photo: PRPhotos

What exactly does the word Hoobastank mean?

According to the band's lead singer Doug Robb, "it doesn't mean anything. And it's really
cool." The group from Agoura Hills, Calif. insists their name is just an inside joke
from high school that has no real story behind it – perhaps the lack of
reasoning behind their name led to their #1 single "The Reason."